Pascal's Wager as Applied to the Defeat of Aging
There are two choices: do nothing and probably age to death, or support research into longevity science and live for much longer in good health if it is successful. Since you are here and reading this, the dice are already rolling for the rest of your life. Why not do what you can to improve the odds of a good outcome, a future in which effective rejuvenation treatments for age-related frailty and disease exist by the time you need them?
The choice comes down to doing nothing - except hoping that you have the right religious beliefs - or doing something - buying a cryonics policy and/or supporting scientific research. So what should you do? Perhaps the best way to illuminate the choice is to consider a previous choice human beings faced in their history. What should they do about disease? Should they pray to the gods and have faith that the gods will cure them, or should they use science and technology to find the cures themselves? In hindsight the answer is clear. Praying to the gods makes no difference, whereas using modern medicine has limited death and disease, and nearly doubled the human lifespan in the last century. Other examples also easily come to mind. What is the best way to predict weather, harness energy, communicate instantly over great distances, or fly to far off planets?These examples highlight another advantage to making [the] wager - the incremental benefits that accrue as we live longer and better lives as we approach the holy grail of blissful immortality. Such benefits provide assurance that we are on the right path, which should increase our confidence that we are making the correct wager. In fact, the benefits already bestowed upon us by science and technology confirm that it is the best path toward a better future. As these benefits accumulate, and as we become aware of them, our existence will become increasingly indistinguishable from the most enchanting descriptions of any afterlife.
So we should throw off archaic superstitions and use our technology. Will we do this? Yes. I say with confidence that when an effective pill that stops or reverses aging becomes available at your local pharmacy - it will be popular. Or if, as you approach death, you are offered the opportunity to have your intact consciousness transferred to your younger cloned body, a genetically engineered body, a robotic body, or a virtual reality, most will use such technologies when they are demonstrated effective. By then almost everyone will prefer the real thing to a leap of faith.
Link: http://reasonandmeaning.com/2014/11/07/the-transhumanist-wager-fails/
I would be very quick to give (invest) in a SENS-type research effort, but I would need to be confident in the management and corporate vision that supported the research. Unfortunately, grass-roots, open source, ideologically-driven, and other such enterprises/ causes/ charities are too fraught with politics, unstable personalities, public-issue liabilities, and a system of values usually not aligned with single-minded, take-no-prisoners, and hyper-focused success. I would pick a Fortune500 or even Calico type of operation where I knew that there were ruthless shareholders relentlessly pushing a profit- and success-driven objective under the 'care' (if that word could be used with a straight face) of a focused Board of Directors given to a high level of privacy and independence. This is why a capitalist-driven goal system, despite how much I loathe such a value system will always beat an 'ethics' or righteous-based 'cure' mission in a money- or time- goal-oriented operation. It is a shame -and often counter-intuitive that such a system is warranted, but there it is. Accept it or not based on what needs to be accomplished.
I totally disagree with Jer. What "ruthless shareholders relentlessly pushing a profit- and success-driven objective" will create is a patented, insanely high-price therapy that I will not be able to afford for 20 years. We see that kind of strategy all the time. See for example cancer drugs prices. I hope anti-aging medicine will never follow that route. If not, I (and most people I know) will be dead long before we can benefit from rejuvenation.
Apart from that, the religious alternative is really no alternative. It's really stupid to seriously think that invisible friends invented by bronze age shepherds will make you immortal and that your mind isn't generated by your neurons but it's some magic thing that enters your body and moves it. C'mon... seriously... we are in the XXI century! What's next? Thinking that Gandalf will save you?
I think Jer is possibly right. It's surprising to me that more tech millionaires aren't getting behind SENS, and I have to wonder if they're unimpressed by something about how the organisation is run. Aubrey's a good advocate, but are he (or his staff) competent managers? I have no idea. I know fundraising is really hard, but all these years later, after swathes of publicity and after the conversation surrounding the feasibility of aging repair has changed so much... it's still only Peter Thiel backing this stuff. The principle of repair based, regenerative remedies for aging is sound. Many people are seemingly convinced of that. Many wealthy individuals pay lip service to the idea. Millionaires and billionaires are lined up round the block wanting to "change the world". And yet this work still desperately wants for funding, which is by and large not materialising. ...Why?
There's a reason people aren't supporting SENS, and I'm very curious to know what it is.
If I had to hazard a guess, Ace, it's because the investment is exceedingly risky and not guaranteed to return within our lifetimes, much like cryogenics.
Create a therapy that will make a mouse actually live a year longer, do a press release, and watch the money flow like water; but until then money is so cautious as to treat SENS like smoke and mirrors, the preponderance of evidence in favor of the theory notwithstanding.
I think Seth has summed up the situation well. And I think the analogy of powered heavier than air flight applies. Before the Wright brothers carried out the first technological demonstration lots of eminent engineers and scientists asserted that it was impossible, or would take a very long time (the day before their first flight USA Today predicted that powered flight was possible, but could take a million years to be realized).
It is tempting to look back on those people as idiots. But in actual fact they were being pretty sensible, they just didn't know as much as the Wright brothers. unfortunately most technological proposals don't pan out. And picking the winners from the failures is very difficult. So most people who are busy with their dependents and allies (rich people have more of these so less time to think) just assign a low probability of success to each and every proposal, and wait for the first technological demonstration to come through.
Which should society invest money in - Fusion reactors or Molten Salt Fission reactors? Unless you have an interest in the technology you're not going to spend a couple of weeks reading up and evaluating the merits and challenges of both, and will just default to "wait and see" mode.
Yeah, but this is a little different. No less than freaking Google are getting into the aging game, yet they are STILL not backing SENS. You think they're not aware of the work SENSF are doing? You think they aren't across ALL the research that's taking place? Aging research is having a moment right now. A big one. But SENS is yet to be invited to the party.
There has to be a reason.
I really hope the situation changes soon.
I think aging is turning out to be way more complicated than we thought. GDF-11 turned out to have no affect, and now it turns out that centenarians don't have anything noticeably special about their DNA. These are pretty major blows to the idea that we can reverse aging. I wonder if Calico will end up shutting down in the near future.
@apersononline - I think you are a bit confused between theories that aging is programed to happen by genes, and theories that aging is caused by accumulated random unrepaired damaged.
Not finding any single genes in centarians or finding that trying to restore a circulating protein to a youthful level has only a limited effect is not a problem for aging as damage and is in fact a prediction of that theory.
These are pretty major blows to the idea that we can reverse aging.
It means no such thing. It just means that aging is not genetic, nor is it based on the GDF-11 thing. This is actually what we would expect if SENS is correct (and I think it is). It definitely is the end of the "programmed" aging theories.
I wonder if Calico will end up shutting down in the near future.
This is possible considering that their focus is on the "genetics" of aging, which it turns out there is none.
@APersonOnline
I must again restate that the potential importance of blood factors like GDF-11 has not been given the proper attention. A mouse study of once-weekly plasma injections does not constitute solid methodology to show that constantly holding blood concentrations of hormones at youthful levels has no effect. It is as though we were to take a medicine once a week and declare that it has no effect.
As others have said, whether hormone/blood profiles have an effect on organism or lifespan is immaterial to the aging as damage hypothesis. What is more important is that we make sure that's actually the case. Aging is one of those problems that anything we can reasonably throw at it, should be thrown.
Sorry. I meant to say "an effect on health or life span."
@Seth - Layman's guess, but the scientists could definitely do a better experiment on GDF-11 by installing a pump in the mice that adds it to their bloodstream continuously. I'm guessing that this wasn't done for cost reasons though.
Whether you believe aging is damage, or dysregulated genes and proteins, or programmed due to genes beneficial in youth now being harmful... it is still important to prove or disprove predictions of these theories. I hope the team behind this experiment get some more cash to investigate more thoroughly.
I think this kind of discussion on transhumanism is a distraction to what regenerative medicine actually is and how close some of it is to the clinic.